Re: [Glsdk-devel] Tutorial series

[<gl...@mo...>]

> The biggest issue I see is with the large amount of "stuff" that has
> to be taught before a working application can be created.

We have shape library. If we had shader library (we need just one shader
at first), then we could leave teaching shaders and buffer objects for
later, and focus on translation, rotation and projection at first. Just
tell the user to load one of predefined shaders and don't bother for now.

Then we could introduce buffer objects, which will allow creating custom
shapes, but still with predefined shaders.

Finally custome shaders would be introduced.

> I'm not sure if we should include tutorials on various techniques or
> not - there are many different lighting equations, should be include a
> tutorial on Lighting, or leave that to the outside world?

I think lighting tutorials should be included.
I think lighting is what shader tutorials should actually start from (we
would do no lighting up to this point, just coloured polygons).
How about this list of lighting shaders:
-pass a color and interpolate it
-directional, unattenuaded diffuse lighting
-point light, diffuse only
-point light, diffuse + specular
-spot light, diffuse + specular
-shader with two lights (directional + interactive controlled spotlight +
a few moving objects in the scene)

All lighting tutorials would use some ambient or emissive lighting.
Then we could go to texturing.


By the way - it would be good if we had following objects in shape library:
-"spotlight" (I propose a flashlight, since it visualises direction nicely)
-"pointlight" (a lightbulb?)
-flat arrow
-3D arrow

I could make models with Blender and convert to .c files if necessary.